Tuesday, October 3, 2017

PENTECOST XVIII 2017 (Proper 22)

The
Gospel for this week is yet another parable set in a vineyard.
Strictly, it is an allegory since it is not simply a story with a
message, but one in which the participants can be directly correlated
with the people to whom, and about whom, the story is told

On
the surface, the parallels are not hard to see. God is the owner of the
vineyard. The tenants are those entrusted with witnessing to his
lordship. The slaves are the Old Testament prophets sent by God, time
and again, to recall his people to faithful obedience. In the face of
their repeated rejection the landlord’s own son – Jesus – is sent to the
vineyard. His murder at the hands of the tenants brings God’s wrath
upon them, and custody of the vineyard is placed in other hands.

Who
exactly are these first tenants? It is easy to misidentify them as the
Jews, and hence suppose that the new tenants are the Christians. The
lesson from Isaiah puts us right on this score: “the vineyard of the
LORD of hosts is the house of Israel”. It is not the tenants, but the
vineyard itself, strange to say, that is to be identified with
the Chosen People, the fertile ground God has provided. This switches our attention to the leaders of Israel.
Forgetting, or disregarding, their obligation to God, they claim the headship of Israel
for their own nationalistic purposes. It is in order to rescue his Chosen People,
not to abandon them, that God sends his Son. This means that the new
tenants do not mark a radical break with the past. Rather, they are
called to be more faithful stewards of the same God.

Valazquez St Paul

Paul’s
Epistle for this Sunday can be seen to reflect this interpretation of
the allegory. He is, he tells the Philippians, "a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee", thereby emphatically underlining his own Jewishness, something he never discounts or disowns. But, he says, “whatever gains I had, these I
have come to regard as loss . . . because of the surpassing value of
knowing Christ Jesus my Lord”.

The
continuity between Jew and Christian is essential to the Gospel message
Paul preaches. It carries this implication, however. If the ancient
Pharisees forfeited their spiritual inheritance because of arrogance and
complacency, a similar attitude can rob modern Christians of theirs.